Do farmers ever perform anything resembling the hard work of urban laborers?

[Boojatta]

Should trade unions be abolished and replaced with requests for government subsidies to increase worker wages? That's what farmers rely on: subsidies. There's an OPEC in this world, but no Organization of Food Exporting Countries.

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I get your point

and maybe that's true these days, but REAL farmers work equally as hard as city laborers.

[JuniperLea]

2. I have farming family in the midwest...

And they are the hardest working people I know. Up at four for breakfast, work 8 hours, have a massive "dinner," work another 8 hours, come back in for "supper." I used to spend summers with them. This city chick got plum tuckered out!

[Boojatta]

4. That doesn't surprise me. The title is a plea for solidarity, not an insult to farmers.

[willing dwarf]

3. Depends on sort of farm

My husband and I farm and the work is farm harder and far longer for both of us than it ever was when he was doing carpentry (for about 18 years) in the city. When you farm, you produce everything yourself. It only happens if you put the work in. THere's not enough hours in the day to make a small farm work, and without the farms we'd all starve, so your point isn't really workable from my perspective.

[Boojatta]

5. "isn't really workable"

What specifically isn't workable?

[sailor65]

6. I have yet to see any union member

work half as hard as a farmer.

[Omaha Steve]

8. You didn't watch "The Last Truck" on HBO?

This month has another labor documentary: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5056/new_york_garment_workers_rags_to_riches_to_rags/

[KT2000]

7. Are you kidding?

Farmers work their asses off. They are up early and so much of what they do depends on physical strength. I am talking about the small farmers that operate in the area where I live.
There are all kinds of farmers and not all receive subsidies.

I visited a paper mill a few years ago. The men were dressed like loggers and mill workers but they were seated in front of computer screens that were running the factory that received the logs, cut them up and moved them onto the pulping process.